Harold Edward James Aldridge (10 July 1918 – 23 February 2015) was an Australian-British writer and journalist. His
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
despatches were published worldwide and he was the author of over 30 books, both fiction and non-fiction works, including war and adventure novels and books for children.
Life and career
Aldridge was born in
White Hills, a suburb of
Bendigo
Bendigo ( ) is a city in Victoria, Australia, located in the Bendigo Valley near the geographical centre of the state and approximately north-west of Melbourne, the state capital.
As of 2019, Bendigo had an urban population of 100,991, makin ...
,
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
. By the mid-1920s the Aldridge family had moved to
Swan Hill
Swan Hill is a city in the northwest of Victoria, Australia on the Murray Valley Highway and on the south bank of the Murray River, downstream from the junction of the Loddon River. At , Swan Hill had a population of 11,508.
Indigenous Peopl ...
, and many of his Australian stories are based on his life growing up there. He studied at the
London School of Economics
, mottoeng = To understand the causes of things
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £240.8 million (2021)
, budget = £391.1 millio ...
. He returned to Australia and worked for ''
The Sun News-Pictorial
''The Sun News-Pictorial'' (known as ''The Sun'') was a morning daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, from 1922 until its merger in 1990 with ''The Herald (Melbourne), The H ...
'' in Melbourne from 1935 to 1938. In 1938 Aldridge moved to London, which remained his base until his death in 2015.
During the Second World War, Aldridge served in the Middle-East as a war correspondent, reporting on the Axis invasions of Greece and Crete. Based on his experiences, he wrote his first novel ''Signed with Their Honour'' and the book was published in both Britain and the United States in 1942, becoming an immediate best-seller. The novel centred on a fictional young British Royal Air Force pilot named John Quayle who flies obsolete
Gladiator
A gladiator ( la, gladiator, "swordsman", from , "sword") was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gla ...
biplanes for the true-life
80 Squadron against the larger and more powerful Axis air-forces over Greece, Crete and North Africa 1940–41. The novel received considerable praise from reviewers including the ''
Miami News
''The Miami News'' was an evening newspaper in Miami, Florida. It was the media market competitor to the morning edition of the '' Miami Herald'' for most of the 20th century. The paper started publishing in May 1896 as a weekly called ''The Miami ...
'' which said "...so graphic are the descriptive passages that the reader tastes the dust and feels the insect stings in the Egyptian heat". American critic Herbert Faulkner West stated that the book "showed real promise" and ranked it the best of his wartime novels. The book proved to be one of Aldridge's most successful, remaining in print until 1988. An attempt in 1943 to make a film based on the novel was abandoned when two Gloster Gladiator biplanes were destroyed in a mid-air collision during filming at an RAF base at Shropshire in the UK.
His second novel ''
The Sea Eagle'' (1944), which centred on Australian soldiers during and after the fall of
Crete
Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and ...
in 1941, was also successful but received less favourable reviews than his first book. American critic N. L. Rothman, however, writing in the ''Saturday Review'', praised the novel for its "timeless-ness" and the high quality of its prose. Aldridge's early novels were heavily influenced by the literary mannerisms of US author
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...
. For ''The Sea Eagle'', Aldridge won the
John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize was a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama) by an author from the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth aged 35 or under, written in English and publis ...
.
Aldridge's most successful and most widely published novel
''The Diplomat'' was released in 1949. An espionage and political drama set amidst the
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...
Revolution in Iran, the novel received mixed reviews. The ''
Anglo-Soviet Journal'' called it "absorbing and impressive". An American review for ''Kirkus'', however, while acknowledging the book's premise to be promising and original, labelled it as slow, repetitive and awkward in style.
His 1950 novel ''The Hunter'' proved that Aldridge was willing to attempt a variety of genres and settings. A drama about fur-hunters living in the wilds of the Ontario bushlands in Canada, the novel was, according to
Walter O'Meara
Walter O'Meara (1897 - 1989) was an American writer born in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Early life
O'Meara spent his childhood in Cloquet, Minnesota, graduating from Cloquet High School in 1914. O'Meara started his college education at the University ...
in the ''Saturday Review'', written in a "flat direct prose that just when you decide to be bored straightens you up with an incisive and revealing word or phrase." He went on to say it was "a sincere and occasionally penetrating study of man against the eternal odds".
Aldridge's next book appeared in 1954, a novel entitled ''Heroes of the Empty View'', depicting an English hero-adventurer in the Middle-East in the vein of
T. E. Lawrence
Thomas Edward Lawrence (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915–1918 ...
and
Charles Gordon.
Mervyn Jones
Mervyn Thomas Jones (born 23 November 1942) is a British diplomat who was Governor of the Turks and Caicos Islands
The Governor of the Turks and Caicos Islands is the representative of the British monarch in the United Kingdom's British O ...
writing in ''
Tribune
Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on the ...
'' magazine criticised the novel's shortage of action, the un-convincing lead character and the book's lack of passion. Jones said that Aldridge had "impressive gifts" as a novelist but needed to find a subject that "really fires him". The novel got a better response from
Walter Havighurst
Walter Edwin Havighurst (November 28, 1901 – February 3, 1994) was a critic, novelist, and literary and social historian of the Midwest. He was a professor of English at Miami University.
History
The son of Lawrence College professors Fre ...
, writing in the ''
Saturday Review'', who called it "a provocative novel...written with authoritative knowledge of men, machines and politics". A review for ''
Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...
'' praised the novel as being "perhaps his most important work, and implicit in its picture of the conflicts, the contradictions, the dilemmas of the Arabs....There is a wider view of the battle for freedom in a world where a machine-ruled society is becoming the norm".
Aldridge returned to the Second World War with his next novel, ''I Wish He Would Not Die'' (1957), a drama set in the Desert Air Force in Egypt. Kirkus Reviews labelled it as an effective work, dealing with "men living under stress and with a heightened sense of humanity present the issues that haunt them..." Aldridge's direct experiences of Egypt, where he lived for much of the Post-War era, both as a Foreign Correspondent and later as a novelist, inspired the 1961 novel ''The Last Exile'', set amidst the turbulence of the Suez Crisis in 1957. The novel, one of Aldridge's most lengthy and most ambitious, drew a less favourable response than previous works. Hal Lehrman, writing in the ''Saturday Review'', labelled it "a swollen bore".
Aldridge continued to draw inspiration from topical events and the Cold War tensions between the East and West gave him the subject for his next novel ''A Captive in the Land'' (1962), set in the frozen wastes of the Arctic where an English scientist rescues the sole survivor of a crashed Russian aircraft. Like all of his politically themed works, Aldridge attempted to explore all viewpoints and portray the "grey" area in-between opposing forces and beliefs. In this case, the Englishman is initially viewed by his fellow Westerners as a hero but later he is treated with increasing suspicision due to his efforts to allow the Russian to be freed. W. G. Rogers, writing in the ''Saturday Review'', praised the novel thus: "...the moral adventure here is more challenging and better and faster reading than the physical. But all the way its a gripping story that gets under your skin and stays there." The novel was made into a film of the
same name in 1993.
From the mid-1960s, many of Aldridge's works were written for children and young adults and a number of his later works were set in his homeland of Australia. His 1966 novel ''My Brother Tom'' was set in the fictional Australian town of St Helen, closely based on the town of
Swan Hill
Swan Hill is a city in the northwest of Victoria, Australia on the Murray Valley Highway and on the south bank of the Murray River, downstream from the junction of the Loddon River. At , Swan Hill had a population of 11,508.
Indigenous Peopl ...
by the
Murray River
The Murray River (in South Australia: River Murray) (Ngarrindjeri: ''Millewa'', Yorta Yorta: ''Tongala'') is a river in Southeastern Australia. It is Australia's longest river at extent. Its tributaries include five of the next six longest r ...
where he spent much of his childhood. This novel, the first in a series of six set in St Helen, while a novel that portrayed a love story between two young people, explored moral and political dilemmas and ideas, in this case the severe tensions between the town's Catholic and Protestant citizenry. The novel became a TV mini-series in 1986, starring
Gordon Jackson and
Keith Michell
Keith Joseph Michell (1 December 1926 – 20 November 2015) was an Australian actor who worked primarily in the United Kingdom, and was best known for his television and film portrayals of King Henry VIII. He appeared extensively in Shakespear ...
. Another of the St Helen series, ''The True Story of Lilli Stubeck'', was the 1995
Children's Book Council of Australia
The Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) is a not for profit organisation which aims to engage the community with literature for young Australians. The CBCA presents the annual Children's Book of the Year Awards to books of literary merit ...
book of the year. His 1973 children's novel ''A Sporting Proposition'' was
adapted
In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the po ...
as the 1975
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
film ''
Ride a Wild Pony
''Ride a Wild Pony'' (also known as ''Born to Run'') is a 1975 American-Australian family adventure film produced by Walt Disney Productions, directed by Don Chaffey and based on the novel ''A Sporting Proposition'' by James Aldridge.
Plot
Set ...
''.
In 1971 he was a member of the jury at the
7th Moscow International Film Festival
The 7th Moscow International Film Festival was held from 20 July to 3 August 1971. The Golden Prizes were awarded to the Italian film ''Confessions of a Police Captain'' directed by Damiano Damiani, the Japanese film ''Live Today, Die Tomorrow!'' ...
.
Aldridge won a
Lenin Peace Prize
The International Lenin Peace Prize (russian: международная Ленинская премия мира, ''mezhdunarodnaya Leninskaya premiya mira)'' was a Soviet Union award named in honor of Vladimir Lenin. It was awarded by a pane ...
in 1972 for "his outstanding struggle for the preservation of peace". That year he also won the gold medal for Journalism from the Organisation for International Journalists. He has also won the
World Peace Council
The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization with the self-described goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass d ...
Gold Medal. For ''The True Story of Spit Macphee'' (Viking, 1986) he won the annual
Guardian Children's Fiction Prize
The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize or Guardian Award was a literary award that annual recognised one fiction book written for children or young adults (at least age eight) and published in the United Kingdom. It was conferred upon the author ...
, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers.
["Guardian children's fiction prize relaunched: Entry details and list of past winners"]
''The Guardian'', 12 March 2001. Retrieved 5 August 2012.
Works
* ''
Signed with Their Honour '' (Brown, Little & Co, 1942)
* ''
The Sea Eagle'' (Michael Joseph, 1944), winner of the
John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize was a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama) by an author from the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth aged 35 or under, written in English and publis ...
, 1945
* ''Of Many Men'' (Michael Joseph, 1946)
* ''
The Diplomat
''The Diplomat'' is an international online news magazine covering politics, society, and culture in the Indo-Pacific region. It is based in Washington, D.C.
It was originally an Australian bi-monthly print magazine, founded by Minh Bui Jones ...
'' (Bodley Head, 1949)
* ''The Hunter'' (Bodley Head, 1950)
* ''Heroes of the Empty View'' (Bodley Head, 1954)
* ''Undersea Hunting for Inexperienced Englishmen'' (Allen & Unwin, 1955)
* ''I Wish He Would Not Die'' (Bodley Head, 1957)
* ''
The Last Exile'' (Hamish Hamilton, 1961)
* ''
A Captive in the Land
''A Captive in the Land'' (russian: Пленник земли, Plennik zemli) is a 1990 Soviet–American survival drama film directed by John Berry and written by Berry and Lee Gold. The film is based on the 1962 novel of the same name by James ...
'' (Hamish Hamilton, 1962)
* ''My Brother Tom'' (Hamish Hamilton, 1966)
* ''The Statesman's Game'' (Hamish Hamilton, 1966)
* ''The Flying 19'' (Hamish Hamilton,1966)
* ''Cairo - Biography of a City'' (1969)
* ''Living Egypt'', with
Paul Strand
Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. ...
(1969)
* ''A Sporting Proposition'' (''Ride a Wild Pony'') (Little Brown, 1973)
* ''The Untouchable Juli'' (Little Brown, 1974)
* ''Mockery in Arms'' (Little Brown, 1974)
* ''The Marvellous Mongolian'' (Macmillan, 1974)
* ''One Last Glimpse'' (Michael Joseph, 1977)
* ''Goodbye Un-America'' (Michael Joseph, 1979)
* ''The Broken Saddle'' (Julia Macrae, 1982)
* ''The True Story of Lilli Stubeck'' (Hyland House, 1984)
* ''The True Story of Spit Macphee'' (Viking, 1986), winner of the
Guardian Prize
The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize or Guardian Award was a literary award that annual recognised one fiction book written for children or young adults (at least age eight) and published in the United Kingdom. It was conferred upon the author ...
[ and ]New South Wales Premier's Literary Award
The New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, also known as the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, were first awarded in 1979. They are among the richest literary awards in Australia. Notable prizes include the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, t ...
* ''The True Story of Lola Mackellar'' (Viking, 1992)
* ''The Girl from the Sea'' (Penguin, 2002)
* ''The Wings of Kitty St Clair'' (Penguin, 2006)
In cinema
* ''The Last Inch
''The Last Inch'' (russian: Последний дюйм, Posledniy dyuym) is a 1959 Soviet drama film directed by Nikita Kurikhin and Teodor Vulfovich. It is based on an eponymous short story by James Aldridge published in the USSR in 1957, and ...
'' (1958), a Soviet film based on the eponymous short story by Aldridge
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aldridge, James
20th-century Australian novelists
20th-century Australian male writers
21st-century Australian novelists
Australian children's writers
Australian male novelists
Guardian Children's Fiction Prize winners
Lenin Peace Prize recipients
John Llewellyn Rhys Prize winners
People from Swan Hill
War correspondents of World War II
1918 births
2015 deaths
Australian war correspondents
Australian emigrants to the United Kingdom